“The OA” | Netflix’s Hidden Gem

The show begins with iPhone footage of a blond woman wearing a tattered dress running across a highway and then jumping from a bridge. It cuts to black and the woman wakes up in the hospital with bruises on her feet. Her nurses tell her that she was lucky to survive and ask the woman her name. She says she is “OA.”

An older couple in Michigan find the video of the woman jumping from the bridge and we find out that it’s their daughter. When they go to the hospital to make sure that it is actually her, they reveal that when she went missing seven years ago, she was blind.

Prairie (OA) heads back to her parent’s house, where they’re met with crowds of camera crews, journalists and neighbors. The agents who worked on her case in the years since her disappearance come to their home to try to understand where she’s been and how she can see again. OA answers their questions without really saying much. She refuses to give her parents any of this information either.

Her sight aside, Prairie is different from before she disappeared. She takes long walks at night alone and won’t tell her parents what the strange scars on her back are from.

Within her first days home, OA befriends a local teenage bully. She does him a favor and, in return, she asks him to bring five strong people to meet her at an abandoned house in their neighborhood. For one hour every night, OA then begins to tell these five strangers her story, which starts in Russia in the 1980s.

If you’re looking for a show that makes you question your entire existence, life and death; this may be just the show for you!

Go into it with an open mind and be prepared to be confused. But, if you do happen to get obsessed—like me—part two is now streaming, too. Forewarning, part two is just as insane. Happy watching!

Caroline Johnson is a junior professional writing major who enjoys wearing face masks while advocating for the forgotten punctuation mark, the interrobang. If she is not doing one of those things, she is probably at Linton Hall writing, communicating or social mediaing on behalf of MSU’s College of Arts & Letters. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter @carolimejohnson.